"Dividing the realm in order to govern" : the spatial organization of the Song state (960-1276 CE), Ruth Mostern

States are inherently and fundamentally geographical. Sovereignty is based on control of territory. This book uses Song China to explain how a pre-industrial regime organized itself spatially in order to exercise authority. On more than a thousand occasions, the Song court founded, abolished, promoted, demoted, and reordered jurisdictions in an attempt to maximize the effectiveness of limited resources in a climate of shifting priorities, to placate competing constituencies, and to address military and economic crises. Spatial transformations in the Song field administration changed the geography of commerce, taxation, revenue accumulation, warfare, foreign relations, and social organization, and even determined the terms of debates about imperial power

The chronology of tenth-century imperial consolidation, eleventh-century political reform, and twelfth-century localism traced in this book is a familiar one. But by detailing the relationship between the court and local administration, this book complicates the received paradigm of Song centralization and decentralization. Song frontier policies formed a coherent imperial approach to administering peripheral regions with inaccessible resources and limited infrastructure. And the well-known events of the Songùwars and reformsùwere often responses to long-term spatial and demographic change. --Book Jacket

States are inherently and fundamentally geographical. Sovereignty is based on control of territory. This book uses Song China to explain how a pre-industrial regime organized itself spatially in order to exercise authority. On more than a thousand occasions, the Song court founded, abolished, promoted, demoted, and reordered jurisdictions in an attempt to maximize the effectiveness of limited resources in a climate of shifting priorities, to placate competing constituencies, and to address military and economic crises. Spatial transformations in the Song field administration changed the geography of commerce, taxation, revenue accumulation, warfare, foreign relations, and social organization, and even determined the terms of debates about imperial power

The chronology of tenth-century imperial consolidation, eleventh-century political reform, and twelfth-century localism traced in this book is a familiar one. But by detailing the relationship between the court and local administration, this book complicates the received paradigm of Song centralization and decentralization. Song frontier policies formed a coherent imperial approach to administering peripheral regions with inaccessible resources and limited infrastructure. And the well-known events of the Songùwars and reformsùwere often responses to long-term spatial and demographic change. --Book Jacket

Prologue -- pt. 1. The meaning of territory -- The political economy of spatial change in imperial China -- The spatial organization of state power in Song China -- Following the tracks of Yu : depictions of imperial territory -- pt. 2. The history of territory -- "Strengthen the trunk and weaken the branches" : the fall and rise of the territorial state (750-1005) -- "Enrich the state and let the people prosper" : spatial organization in China's long eleventh century (1005-1127) -- The end of the middle-period spatial cycle (1127-1368) -- Appendix: The digital gazetteer of Song China / Ruth Mostern with Elijah Meeks